Akira Kurosawa's films are now part of the global cinema. Many of his films have ignited Western audiences' interests for a long time. His gunfighters and samurais are extraordinarily received by the viewers around the world as the representation of the mythical figures in the cultural structure of Japanese history. The influence of Hollywood masters such as John Ford on his cinematic texts and his influence on the 1970s and 1980s generation of American filmmakers shows the iconic representation of the interaction between different cultural issues and aesthetics of the film schools. Understanding Kurosawa's cinema seems to be regarded as an alternative model for cultural studies whose detailed insights refer to the dialectical tensions between the confrontations of the cultural modes of representations.
Kurosawa's aesthetic vision relies on his knowledge of using wide angle lenses, fast editing to create required pace for the mise-en scene of the battle scenes, the precisely calculated camera movements and the choreography of Japanese sword playing. Of course, the organizing and accurate design of the set before shooting is crucial for Kurosawa:
"After the object to be photographed has thus been "improved: and made more real, Kurosawa is ready to decide how to photograph it. Though he accomplishes this in various ways, his considerations are usually: to do it in such a way that the meaning of the shots is enhanced, and/or in such a way that economy of action is created, and/or in such away that the composition itself comments on the scene" (Richie, 234).
The camera movement in Hollywood films sometimes serves to follow character's action. For Kurosawa the camera movements through the battle scenes explore something absolutely different in mise-en scene:
"Throughout his cinema, Kurosawa will be interested in exploring and extending the capacity of camer movement to situate characters according to important psychological and social relations prevailing among them (an interest that reaches something of a climax in Seven Samurai) " (Prince,42)
Kurosawa's choreography of battle scenes is expected to create the spatial visual field through which the continuity flow of fast cutting makes possible:
"Kurosawa's major editing innovations concern the amount of time an image remains on the screen, the continuity from one action to the next, and the placement of the cut. the ordinary way to cut a film is wait until the necessary action or dialogue is concluded and then the end scene....If an explanation is necessary, he will interrupt the explanation and show its results (and his most usual method is seen in the many short-cuts that so tighten his films)" (Richie, 239).
Not only can the social status and class identity be distinguished in his samurai films, but the generic category of jidaigeki convincingly invents the emergence of jidaijeki throughout his films as a new genre which has little to do with tradition in Japanese cinema. Kurosawa's sword fight scene which is the carefully choreographed dance coupled with the avoidance of any explicit sexual scenes is either faithful to jidaigeki's conventions or a part of his formalistic approach to treat the narrative as the strong realistic and allegorical motif of the genre:"Kurosawa's approach is demythologization of the legend in search of realism" (Yoshimoto,238)
Kurosawa's aesthetic tradition represented by montage and long take is necessary to emphasize on the turbulence and tension between Eastern and western traditions. The use of anamorphic frames and telephoto lenses to create a battle sequence beside the multi-camera filming and fast editing contextualize his work not only on the ideological values but also on his visual thinking. His battle sequences are not only the scenes in which the swordplay fights and battle events can occur but also the messages of the scenes are beyond the dialectical structure of the mise-en scene:
"With Kurosawa and his work, we must employ a multiplex perspective because we are dealing with manifold levels of transformation: cultural, individual, cinematic...We may establish a pathway from Meiji, Taisho, and Showa-era into the material of the films" (Prince, xviii).
Kurosawa's style as an artist to create the combination of the sound and image in his action sequences is founded and structure on the interference of the sound with an image rather than merely an accompaniment:
"The context of the sound is equally important, and some of Kurosawa's most magical effects have been achieved through an apparently irrational use of natural sound...Reality, context, and volume are rigorously controlled in Kurosawa's sound track, and the result is careful selection of what we know we hear and what we hear without realizing it. Music is used in somewhat the same way" (Richie, 240).
As Stephan Prince suggests:
"What is always impressive about Seven Samurai is its boundless energy, the sped of its tracking shots, the aggressiveness of its wipe-linked transitions and dazzling use of multi-camera perspectives" (Prince, 204).
Seven Samurai, Kurosawa's masterpiece, is the historical reconstruction of Japanese period films which can be connected epically in a vital way to jidaigeki's genre. The film is convincingly meaningful within the framework of jidaigeki, and the validity of notorious and practical scenes at the end of the film situates him as the most successful director and the choreographer of the battle scenes in Japanese cinema. Here Kurosawa's concern as a thinker and filmmaker is about to create a cinematic text whose style of editing in fight scenes can be compared with Eisenstein and his Battleship Potemkin (1925) in terms of composing the chaotic motion:
"There is no shot that does not have motion, either in the object photographed, or in the movement of camera itself" (Richie, 103).
Kurosawa always uses short cuts rather than the long takes to hasten the rhythm of the battle. His camera brings the action close to the audience by involving directly with the mis en-scene, the audience is enabled to participate in the battle whose devastating and explosive energy can be explored only through Kurosawa's use of anamorphic frame. The exploration of heroism in Kurosawa's jidaigeki films such as Seven Samurai ironically represents samurai power in traditional context. Kurosawa has to convey the anarchy and turmoil of the conflict between Farmers/villagers and samurai/bandits social classes at the final sequence of the film just to create his ultimate humanity effect on the cinematic text:
"The warriors train peasants to defend their village against bandits and together the two classes restore peace and security. Through this success, however, the samurai make themselves unnecessary in the end" (Goodwin, 196).
In order to analyze his aesthetic style of the film, one has to understand that Kurosawa's interpretation of the Tokugawa period or the sixteenth century historical and cultural context of Japan in which the classes were separated is reluctantly meant to be required materialistic resources to create his cinematic expression as the auteur:
"His samurai were meant to stand-in their temperance and loyalty, their self discipline and austere unconcern for wealth and power-as models and leaders for all other classes...Relations among the classes and permeability of class lines are central to Seven Samurai' (Prince, 206).
As Stephan Prince Suggests:
"Individualism against the collaboration between the groups, the heroic presence of the master-pupil relationship, and the transcendental and materialistic capabilities of every character lead the spectator to be a witness of the character's traumatic encounter with battle, violence, death and sexuality. This traumatic element is obvious and there is plentitude in the final sequence" (Prince, )
He also states that, " The final battle is a supreme spiritual and physical struggle, and it is fought in a blinding rainstorm, which enables Kurosawa to visualize an ultimate fusion of social groups. Their efforts forged by common praxis, samurai and peasant become a single team, a fearsome, efficient force defending their community. As such, they are indistinguishable, covered alike with mud and fighting with equal desperation. But this climactic vision of classlessness, with typical Kurosawan ambivalence, has become a vision of horror. The battle is a vortex of swirling rain and mud, slashing steal, thrashing, anonymous bodies, and screaming, dying men. The ultimate fusion of social identity emerges as an expression of hellish chaos, against which the final relapse into native ritual and class separation fells a relief"(Prince, 218).
Among the crucial moments of the final climactic scenes, there is a shot in which Kambei [the leader of samurai group] picks up his bow and places the arrow:
"There is an intervening shot of the bandit chieftain riding by, only in the next shot for Kambei to follow through and release the arrow. In true Eisensteinian fashion, Kurosawa has Kambei shoot the arrow in one shot, only to have it strike home in where Eisenstein has a shot fired only to cut to a woman already wounded, with the spectator experiencing the moment of impact without having actually viewing it" (Mellen, 56).
By using of jump cut, Kurosawa moves the narrative forward to challenge the visual framing, but the combination of the character's movements in the frame while he uses the camera movements and telephoto lenses creates a centralized position for the samurais in the foreground and farmers in the background and frames the bandits in the isolated shots and landscapes. Simultaneously, their moving appears to be significantly connected with the chaotic setting of the environment:
"Rather than depict choreographed swordfights with conventional moves, Kurosawa storyboarded more realistic fight in which characters defended or attacked in any way they could have given their circumstances" (Stafford, 71).
In order to emphasize the pressure on the villagers and samurai, Kurosawa creates the tight framings, often in depth by using the telephoto lenses in the battle scenes while helping the spectators to involve with the cinematic text:
"Kurosawa was once again an innovator in using a telephoto lens during the battle scenes in order to put the spectator into the battle" (Stafford, 59).
The conflict between stasis and motion conveyed by telephoto lens define the character's visual centrality. The structure of the closure discloses the reappearance of the class struggle at the end:
" Paradoxically, the organic community is destroyed in the moment of the victory. With the bandits gone, the farmers no longer need the samurai, and class disparity and exclusion reappear" (Prince, 218).
It will be reasonable to draw the normal conclusion from Yoshimotos' book as he suggests that:
"If Seven Samurai successfully elevates the level of jidaigeki's realism a notch, it is not by representing historical facts accurately. Instead, the film creates a heightened sense of realism by meticulously showing all kinds of details include plot and story , character traits, sets and props, costumes, and acting style" (Yoshimoto, 233)
Kurosawa's fundamental problem for his heroic and action cinema is to admit the necessity of reformulation of rhetorical structure to challenge the dialectical inquiry into the past.
Goodwin, James. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema John Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Mellen, Joan. Seven Samurai London: BFI, 2002.
Prince, Stephan. The Warrior's Camera; The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa New Jersey: Princeton University, 1991.
Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa Berkeley: University of California press, 1996.
Stafford, Roy. Seven Samurai London: York Press, 2001.
Yoshimoto, Mitsushiro. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema Duke Universdity Press, 2000.
By: Morad Sadeghi
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